The Parliament House of Hungary

Előszó

BH HHH THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE OF HUNGARY The Parliament House in Budapest is the home of Hungárián legislation and the headquarters of the country's highest dignitaries. The vast building, lavishly ornamented with sculptures and paintings, has in fact come to symbolize Hungárián statehood. Its construction took place in one phase about a century ago, but the history of the institution that meets there goes back many centuries. And the country made several previous attempts to build a Parliament House, and once constructed a new provisional home for the Representatives, before this landmark was finished. : I The Antecedents

In Hungary, the system of estates arose quite early by European standards, i.e. in the last third of the 13th century. As early as 1277, the high clergy and nobility had assembled at the Rákos stream's plains near Pest. From the mid15th century Parliament convened on a regular basis, and an Act in 1608 codified bicameral sessions. The venue always changed as the country's fortunes and political conditions shifted; the Estates gathered at different towns, in ecclesiastical or secular buildings. In the 17th century, when the ancient royal seat of Buda was under Turkish rule, the Parliament, or Diet, chose as its permanent venue the town of Pozsony (today's Bratislava in Slovakia), in The Royal Treasury's palace in Pozsony, where Parliament convened. The Viennese architect G. B. Martinelli designed in 1753. (19th-century view) W ¦i 5 b > Vissza